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Blood Morons

Here we go again; literal lunatics are, for the zillionth time, announcing the end of the world. What’s going to do us in this time? Would you believe the next four lunar eclipses? Starting tonight, an unusual, but not rare, sequence of four lunar eclipses begins. Some religious loons are claiming this so-called eclipse tetrad is a sign of the end times. Oh, if it were only so. Imagine a world cleansed of imbeciles! Unfortunately, as Fred Espenak notes on his highly regarded eclipse pages, there is nothing unusual about this sequence of eclipses. In the last five thousand years we’ve had 142 eclipse tetrads. That’s about one world ending every thirty-five years. Look around people; we’re still here.

It astounds me that there is still a market for such nonsense. Astrology, and that’s all this blood moon rubbish is, has been completely, totally, absolutely and utterly debunked. On this the science really is settled! But, when have we ever let science get in the way of a good marketing opportunity, and world endings are well — world ending — sales opportunities. Get your end times before they’re gone! Running astronomical scams is easy because large swaths of the public cannot reliably answer basic questions like: does the Sun go around the Earth? Maintaining such levels of ignorance must be exhausting.

You might want to pull your head out of your blood moron ass long enough to observe tonight’s total lunar eclipse. It starts around midnight here in St. Louis with totality commencing around 2:00 am. I’ll be out there, St. Louis weather permitting, shooting eclipse tracks. With proper framing eclipse tracks make neat pictures. If what I have in mind pans out it will constitute my next post.